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Friday, August 26, 2016

The New York Times is launching digital-first teams to cover ''cli-fi novels'' and human-induced climate change with an in-house and public ''Help Wanted'' advertisement

UPDATE: Not everyone was thrilled with The Times’ decision to hype global warming. University of Colorado climate denialist Roger Pielke thought The Times’ ad hinted at more of a political campaign than a journalistic venture. He tweeted: ''

The New York Times is launching digital-first teams to cover ''cli-fi novels'' and human-induced climate change with an in-house and public ''Help Wanted'' advertisement

August 26, 2016

HELP WANTED: CLIMATE CHANGE EDITOR WANTED FOR NEW NEW YORK TIMES

SALARY $180,000 plus benefits and perks

The ad for a climate change editor asks prospective applicants who they have in mind to serve as "a signature voice" for coverage — calling to mind a single journalist who might curate a newsletter, report marquee stories, hold events and appear on live video, says Ben Mullin at Poynter.Org

The job help wanted ad notes that AGW editor the NYT is looking for will be required to think about how news should be presented on a variety of platforms. Here's an excerpt from The Times' education editor job:

''The coverage should include journalism in a variety of formats: video, photography, newsletters, data visualizations, podcasts, conferences and more. The unit should make strategic decisions about which forms are top priorities and which are not.''

Reading through the ad, one thing is clear: As The Times' ongoing effort to reimagine its news report continues, these positions are part of a new news organization that is trying to eschew bureaucracy and embrace collaboration across a variety of teams and formats.

Here's the full memo in part and slightly edited:

The digital tools at our disposal allow us to tell stories in new, exciting ways – as you all demonstrate every day. Rather than relying only on traditional news stories, we can also write in a different voice, and we can present our journalism much more visually than in the past.

In recent months, the masthead and I have announced several initiatives that show how the newsroom is moving forward. The marriage between great reporting and innovative storytelling is why we’re so excited about today’s announcement.

We will be creating three new coverage teams that, from the start, will be organized above all to serve our rapidly growing online audience. We already have a few digital-first departments, but none of them has primary responsibility for covering major news. These new teams will have such responsibilities and, as a result, will become models for the newsroom of the near future.

One of the new teams will be heade by our new Climate Change Editor, who will also b covering the rise of cli-fi novels and movies in popular culture, among other things.

Cli-fi novels and their reception worldwide is a vital subject on which readers look to The Times for authoritative coverage.

The cli-fi genre story is arguably the most important in the world today, given the role it plays in so many other stories, including economics and inequality and politics. Lots of places write about these topics, many very well. But few are able to bring our level of on-the-ground reporting and digital storytelling prowess to these subjects.

We expect these teams to function on their own, apart from the current department structure, reporting to me and the masthead and overseeing all reporters and editors whose primary focus is climate and cli-fi.

The Print Hub helps makes the creation of this team possible, and it will decide where the stories will run in the newspaper.

I expect this climate/cli-fi team to look different from most newsroom departments, with a richer mix of writers and visual journalists. And the search for the leaders of this department is open to journalists with different backgrounds, including people who did not begin their careers as writers. There are no leading candidates. In fact, we are conducting an open search for the editor, considering both internal and outside candidates. I welcome applications from all parts of the newsroom.

We will be conducting this search in a different way from past searches, and it too will be a model for the future. Any interested candidate should submit a detailed vision for the coverage they plan to lead directly to me, Dean Barquet or Sam Dolnick. This vision should define the group’s mission and its goals: What audiences are we trying to reach and how will we serve them? Who are our main competitors, and how will our coverage stand out? Which stories are a priority – and which are not? Which journalistic forms, including video, are a priority -- and, just as important, which are not? What should be the team’s staffing mix, and how will it work with other parts of the newsroom?

How will we know whether the team is succeeding and whether it should grow in the future? And of course what are the biggest news stories and investigations in these subject areas.

The masthead will be choosing the new climate change/cli-fi editor based in large part on these visions and on follow-up conversations. I will be setting up a group of Times journalists from various departments to help with this search.

As I’ve said before, this moment is an exciting one for The Times. We have the ability to make our newspaper -- both the printed version and our digital platform -- even better than it already is – and to put it in front of even more readers. I look forward to hearing from people who want to make that happen on cli-fi and AGW - these most engaging subjects.
— Dean B.